RKS Literature: The Boring Show Home (Yoshida Kenkō)

“How ugly and depressing to see a house that has employed a bevy of craftsmen to work everything up to  a fine finish, where all the household items set out for proud display are rare and precious foreign or Japanese objects, and where even the plants in the garden are clipped and contorted rather than left to grow as they will. How could anyone live for long in such a place? The merest glimpse will provoke the thought that all this could go up in smoke in an instant.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS Literature:  The Necessary Sordidness of Cash (Herman Melville)

 “The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for the love of it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for their more common and daily appetites. For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object-that final and romantic object, too many would have turned from in disgust”

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

RKS Literature: Why Cling to Life to an Ugly Old Age (Yoshida Kenkō)

“If our life did not fade and vanish like the dews of Adashino’s grave or the drifting smoke from Toribe’s burning grounds, but lingered on forever, how little the world would move us. It is the ephemeral nature of things that makes them wonderful.

Why cling to life which cannot last forever only to arrive at an ugly old age. It is most seemly to die before forty at the latest.

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS Literature: How to be an Elegant Lover (Yoshida Kenkō)

“The elegant thing is for a lover to wander aimlessly hither and yon, drenched with the frosts or dews of night, tormented by the fears of his parents’ reproaches and the censure of the world, the heart beset with uncertainties, yet for all that sleeping alone often, though always fitfully.

On the other hand, he shouldn’t lose himself to love too thoroughly or gain the reputation of being putty in women’s hands.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS Literature: Murder: Aesthetics and Morality (Thomas De Quincey)

“Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle, (as it generally is in the pulpit, and at the Old Bailey) and that I confess, is its weak side; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it, that is in relation to good taste.” 

Thomas de Quincey, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts”, 1827.

RKS Literature: The Composition of the Fine Art of Murder (Thomas De Quincey)

“People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed-a knife-a purse-and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature.”

Thomas de Quincey, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts”, 1827.

Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom: TALES FROM MY HOOD: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF ‘CRIME”!

TALES FROM MY HOOD: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF ‘CRIME”!

We are on a bit of a “crime roll” here so let’s move from horrific to humorous.

A few years ago when Dylan the Westie was the Westie of the house there lived B and W, backyard neighbours of Fay and Bob. W and B were heading up to their family cottage near Ottawa for a long weekend. W asked Bob to keep an eye on the house and if necessary, alert the police if there was any suspicious activity. No one was expected at the house. At the time there were a few break and enters in the hood.

At 21:00 hours Bob is in the kitchen and he looks at W and B’s kitchen and sees a man in an undershirt drinking a bottle of beer. He was unable to contact W and B so made the call to Toronto Police Services (TPS) to inform them of the “criminal in the kitchen”. With the utmost sense of urgency they show up at W and B’s house 3 hours after my call to them and confront the criminal.

The criminal happened to be B’s brother who had a key to the house and unexpectedly showed up for a cold beer and to watch a bit of television. TPS did, according to W, grill the hell out of the “criminal” and determined he was not a criminal but an unannounced house guest!

Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom: TALES FROM MY HOOD: DOUBLE MURDER AND SUICIDE BY AN UNUSUAL MURDERESS

TALES FROM MY HOOD: DOUBLE MURDER AND SUICIDE BY AN UNUSUAL MURDERESS

Bob told me one of the great literary influences of his life has been the lurid and sensational “Allo Police” reeking with screaming headlines published in Montreal and now long gone. Sensational and grisly photos particularly murder victims. Rape, assaults, bank robberies, drugs, gangs of the lowest roustabouts even worse than what you see on “90 Day Finance” or its 98 spinoffs. It made his once hometown of Montreal look like the fiery pits of hell, politics aside. No hebetude when reading “Allo Police”!

When I tell you this Tale From My Hood perhaps that “Allo Police” yellow lumpenproletarian journalism has rubbed off on me.

The old guard of the hood mention this awful twenty year old occurrence. About a 10-minute walk from here there lived a 37-year-old psychiatrist Suzanne Killinger-Johnson with her husband and two children. Yes, a psychiatrist can be mentally disturbed. This lady took her six-month-old son Cuyler and jumped in the path of a subway train. Cuyler died on impact while mother lingered for a few days before succumbing to her injuries. The murder suicide shook Toronto to its roots and I can see it still rattles the old guard when they talk about it while us dogs’ nose around.

Bob drives by her house and I hear him occasionally mutter……..

RKS Literature: The Wild Vindictiveness of Captain Ahab Against the Accursed Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

 “…suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab’s leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay could have smote him with more seeming malice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations.”

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

Lost in Puppydom Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom: RORY DYLAN STEPHEN AND TIGER WOODS PICKED UP ON DUI CHARGE!

RORY DYLAN STEPHEN AND TIGER WOODS PICKED UP ON DUI CHARGE!

Much to my humiliation I was picked up today after a DUI!

You may have heard the great golfer Tiger Woods was also recently picked up on a DUI. I have watched this event unfold over the past day or two. Bloated and puffy remarked Bob looking like that rock n roller Jim Morrison before his death in Paris. Can’t be good Bob sighed! Good news…just heard he is seeking treatment

Tiger found with pills in his pocket it seems. Poor guy in pain from his previous DUI rollovers and surgeries? Whatever. Not such a good reason for premature death.

I am neither a rock n roller, actor or a degenerate of any sort but today I was picked up on a DUI.

Let me clarify, Tiger’s DUI is “Driving Under the Influence”. My DUI is “Diarrhea Under the Influence”. As par for the course (pun intended) I gobbled up something that dropped on the kitchen floor and it didn’t agree with me. A fierce gurgling ensued followed by some nasty gas so Bob had to quickly charge toward me to pick me up and quickly place me outside for a watery event. Whatever I ate it was not a good influence on me!

I wonder if Tiger would have preferred my DUI over his?